Can you hear me now?
“I feel terrible for her being here,” Teresa Lewis said. “She knew about it before it happened. Oh, what a mess! I didn’t think about the consequences it would bring. I hate myself.”
Teresa Lewis said she met would-be triggermen Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller, both in their 20s, while waiting in the customer service line at a Wal-Mart store. She and Shallenberger became lovers and concocted the scheme to murder Julian Lewis [her husband at the time], who she said was an abusive alcoholic. (read more)
And she thinks that her death sentence is unfair. I’m sorry, but I still have yet to hear a decent reason to not keep the death penalty (in severe cases). I’m not saying we should do people in for jaywalking or piracy (K.W. Jeter’s Noir notwithstanding) I’m starting to get tired of this reformist system. Some people can’t be fixed.
Anti-globalization activists view the G8 — the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia — as a cabal that favors multinational corporations and the rich at the expense of the poor.
“This was a low turnout [of protesters in Georgia for the G8 conference] in terms of the recent history of these events,” said Robert Randall, a Brunswick-based peace activist. “That speaks to the reality of how the authorities have terrorized people.” (read more)
Yeah, guy. Mhm. Sure. Or maybe people just have other, more constructive things to do than sit and bitch at people that can’t hear them. If you have issues with globalism, that’s fine. It’s even good — no one should accept sweeping change without at least questioning its merit. But standing miles away from a meeting where the most prominent things on the agenda are rebuilding Iraq and tackling HIV/AIDS just really doesn’t get much done. If you have a message, share it in a coherent manner. Don’t smash stuff — they’ll just replace what you broke with cheaper foreign goods. Try a TV show — you’ll get more viewers. Run columns in newspapers. Get interviewed on TV. Getting arrested worked in the Civil Rights era but now it just fills up our overcrowded prisons even faster. And, all y’all protester-people — you know what the best way to oppose globalization is? Don’t buy foreign goods. Don’t go to Starbucks. Stay out of the GAP, Banana Republic, Target, Pier One and the like. Better not use a barbecue, eat sushi, drink coffee, tea, beer or wine, use paper, use a computer, listen to the radio or hum the National Anthem — these things were all contributed to our society by ‘foreigners’. Interestingly, television was invented right here in America, and we’ve been sitting in front of it ever since.
Military vehicles rumbled through the streets and helicopters hovered in the skies in a show of force reminiscent of that seen in the United States after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The heavy military presence, however, looked somewhat unnecessary by the end of the summit.
Well, yeah there was a big military presence — many of the most powerful people in the world are at the G8 summit, and it’s kind of like Western-Power-In-A-Room. And quit it with the September 11th thing… it was years ago. It was a bad thing, yes .. but there’s so much more to the whole issue. I’m sick of September 11th this and that. You know what it was? A prologue. It was the beginning of an opus discordiam that the western world is trying to bring to a close before the climax. Let’s focus on the whole book, not just page one.
At least six researchers may have been exposed to deadly anthrax after a shipping foul up led them to believe they were working with dead rather than live bacteria, officials said Thursday. (read more)
Well, they’re not very good researchers if they can’t tell if something’s alive or dead, are they? And what was anthrax doing in the Children’s Hospital? Research on virulent things like that should be taking place in highly secured areas, not urban Children’s Hospitals.
In other words, unless technologists modify the underlying architecture of the Internet to prevent zombie attacks, political activists have at their disposal a perfect megaphone, one that can’t be turned off. (read more)
Yeah, and let’s get on that, shall we? Who cares if it makes some peoples’ old computers obsolete? If you’ve had a computer for more than five years, it’s time to upgrade anyway. The changes to the systems that handle email seem like a decent idea — in essence, a digital signature (that can be verified against a server somewhere) and whats called a reverse lookup (which queries an ISP to make sure the address that a message is sent from actually exists). It’s better than taxing email (talk about unenforceable) and it’s much more responsible than continuing to use the venerable but outdated protocols that drive email today.
From the wired.com sidebar:
UR GLTY
A tale of sex, murder and religion is topping the headlines in Sweden this month as a Pentecostal pastor is tried for murder. A 27-year-old nanny who was having an affair with the pastor has confessed to killing the pastor’s wife and trying to kill the man who lived next door to him. She said Helge Wassmo, the 32-year-old pastor, told her the only way she could please God was to kill them. Prosecutors say Wassmo wanted the two dead so that he could marry the next-door neighbor’s wife. The nanny also said she received several SMS messages from God, urging her to kill. The messages were traced to Wassmo, who claimed they were simply meant to provide religious guidance.
— Debra Jones
Text messages from God, eh? He must have one huuuuge wireless bill… Imagine the roaming charges in heaven.
